MusicMatch taps Microsoft to challenge RealNetworks

MusicMatch is adding Microsoft Windows Media's video player to its Net jukebox in a move to challenge the grip of streaming media heavyweight RealNetworks.

3 January 200211:43 am AEDT

MusicMatch is adding Microsoft's video player to its Net
jukebox in a move to challenge the grip of streaming media heavyweight
RealNetworks.

The new version of MusicMatch's
jukebox will let users play thousands of music videos encoded in the
Windows Media format. Microsoft is aggressively pushing its format to
harness the lucrative online music-listening audience dominated by
RealNetworks and to open formats such as the popular MP3.

"Our latest release demonstrates one of the key advantages to Internet
music: the ability to access music in a rich multimedia environment,"
Dennis Mudd, CEO of MusicMatch, said in a statement.

With an estimated 4.5 million regular
users, MusicMatch's jukebox also will let computer users record and listen
to music encoded in MP3 and search for tracks with Listen.com's search
engine, which will be integrated with the player.

Like Microsoft, MusicMatch wants to be a serious competitor to
RealNetworks, whose free jukebox has more than 17.5 million registered
users. Online jukeboxes typically let people organize, store and play
digital music on PCs or other devices.

"We see [RealNetworks] as our number one competitor," Mudd told
Reuters in an interview. "We are out to beat them. We want to have
better software."

Although RealJukebox Gold incorporates some features of the company's
RealPlayer to support video playback, the fact that RealNetworks hasn't
integrated the programs as a single consumer product was seen as a possible
marketing and strategic blunder by some music industry insiders at the
Webnoize 1999 conference earlier this month.

"That was the most effective way to build RealJukebox in a short period of
time," said Gary Cowan, RealJukebox product manager.

But RealNetworks already is working on the next versions of its products
and could completely combine its media player and jukebox software.

"RealJukebox can take advantage of a lot of capabilities of the RealPlayer
without launching the RealPlayer," Cowan added. "For example, users can
download a video within Jukebox with a single click; we've had this
capability since the RealJukebox Gold product launched in September."

According to a recent study by
PC Data Online, between September and October, Microsoft's Windows Media
Player was gaining ground, with a 34 percent usage increase over
RealNetworks and Apple's QuickTime Player. Yet the study found that
RealPlayer is used by an average of eight out of 10 consumers, while Windows
Media Player is used by an average of six out of 10.

Meanwhile, MusicMatch has distanced itself from RealNetworks' technology. Previous
versions of MusicMatch used an MP3 encoder developed by Xing Technologies,
which was bought by RealNetworks in August. MusicMatch has since switched
to an encoder made by the Fraunhofer Institute of Germany.

Companies such as EMusic.com and RioPort.com, which plan to compete in the
online music industry by selling digital tracks through their sites and
partners, don't seem to care which music format or player wins--sellers
want to offer consumers access to all of them.